om which however he rose
again; and his resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings.
He was called Savior and Mediator, and sometimes figured as a Lamb; and
sacramental feasts in remembrance of him were held by his followers.
This legend is apparently partly astronomical and partly vegetational;
and the same may be said of the following about Osiris.

(1) The birthfeast of Mithra was held in Rome on the 8th day
before the Kalends of January, being also the day of the Circassian
games, which were sacred to the Sun. (See F. Nork, Der Mystagog,
Leipzig.)

(2) This at any rate was reported by his later disciples (see
Robertson's Pagan Christs, p. 338).

Osiris was born (Plutarch tells us) on the 361st day of the year,
say the 27th December. He too, like Mithra and Dionysus, was a great
traveler. As King of Egypt he taught men civil arts, and "tamed them by
music and gentleness, not by force of arms"; (1) he was the discoverer
of corn and wine. But he was betrayed by Typhon, the power of darkness,
and slain and dismembered. "This happened," says Plutarch, "on the 17th
of the month Athyr, when the sun enters into the Scorpion" (the sign of
the Zodiac which indicates the oncoming of Winter). His body was placed
in a box, but afterwards, on the 19th, came again to life, and, as in
the cults of Mithra, Dionysus, Adonis and others, so in the cult
of Osiris, an image placed in a coffin was brought out before the
worshipers and saluted with glad cries of "Osiris is risen." (1) "His
sufferings, his death and his resurrection were enacted year by year in
a great mystery-play at Abydos." (2)

(1) See Plutarch on Isis and Osiris.

(2) Ancient Art and Ritual, by Jane E. Harrison, chap. i.

The two following legends have more distinctly the character of
Vegetation myths.

Adonis or Tammuz, the Syrian god of vegetation, was a very beautiful
youth, born of a Virgin (Nature), and so beautiful that Venus and
Proserpine (the goddesses of the Upper and Underworlds) both fell in
love with him. To reconcile their claims it was agreed that he should
spend half the year (summer) in the upper world, and the winter half
with Proserpine below. He was killed by a boar (Typhon) in the autumn.
And every year the maidens "wept for Adonis" (see Ezekiel viii. 14). In
the spring a festival of his resurrection was held--the women set out
to seek him, and having found the supposed corpse placed it (a wooden
image) in a coffin or